Posted by Barron • Creativity • Photography • Comments • Permalink

I’ll soon be updating my camera collection with a replacement for my 6-year old Konica-Minolta 7D. The new Sony A77 camera actually shares the same lineage as the 7D, but I skipped a generation (the Sony A700). The 7-series of cameras is the higher end of the consumer models by Sony/Minolta. I still own my Minolta X-700 film camera, still want to buy the super Minolta Maxxum/Alpha 7 film camera, and seriously thought about getting the Sony A700 when it was released. But my 7D has kept chugging along, taking nice photographs so I decided to wait. It’s a very reliable camera. But within the past year, the body has started falling apart a bit. The little clip that holds the battery in place broke, but the door is strong enough to hold it securely. Just a couple months ago, the small sliding door that covers the USB cable connection busted. I still have the pieces, so a little glue should take care of it. But after 6+ years, I think the time is right to upgrade to the new Sony A77.

Six years is a long time in terms of camera technology. Not only has image quality improved, but Sony has invested in a new kind of system (SLT) which has some great advantages over the traditional SLR mechanics. The SLT system’s mirror does not flip up to let light hit the sensor. Instead, it is a semi-transparent mirror which reflects some light to an Electronic Viewfinder, and the rest to the main imaging sensor. Because the main sensor is always evaluating the scene (it has no traditional mirror blocking it), it can constantly autofocus, even while shooting video. Plus the FPS has been increased to 12 FPS even at full 24 Megapixels. The Electronic Viewfinder is OLED and is supposedly almost as good as a traditional optical viewfinder. The advantage of the EVF is that information can be overlaid onto the image and it shows you pretty much how the photo will turn out (white balance, aperture, exposure). Also, the viewfinder is as large as a full-frame camera’s and it shows 100% of the captured image.

Here’s a small list of the things I am looking forward to on the A77:

• GPS: It’s cool that the camera can geotag photos, but what’s really neat is that it can auto-adjust the date and time. I know, it’s silly, but so convenient!
• High ISO: With a range of 50-16,000 ISO low-light images will be much better than my 7D
• Peaking Mode: When you are manual focusing, the EVF will draw highlights around the parts of the image that are in focus. This is going to be a pleasure to use when I attach my old manual focus Minolta Rokkor lenses. I can’t wait to use my 135mm f/2!
• 3D Panorama: We recently got a 3D tv, and have looked at a few 3D images using it (and the PS3). It will be fun to make my own 3D images.
• Flash: My 7D never was able to get consistent exposures with my HVL-F56AM flash unit. I am anxious to be able to use it with confidence now.
• Weather Sealing: It’s not waterproof like my Panasonic Lumix, but it will be more resistant to rain and dirt than my 7D.

I’m sure everything about the A77 will be an improvement over the 7D, but I will miss a couple things about the ol Konica-Minolta; the beefy dials. These are so well-made and fun to use, that I don’t think anything can compare. It’s got a button on the top which you need to push in order to turn the dial. It’s so high-quality and I think it looks pro. It’s actually got two dials, one hidden below the main one which is turned by a lever. It’s so slick. I wish Sony would have kept them. I know the exposure compensation dial is probably unnecessary (I had re-programmed the rear control dial to adjust exposure anyways) but it looks so cool!

Thankfully Sony has kept many of the buttons in the same place from the 7D to the A700 and now to the A77, most importantly the AEL and AF/MF buttons. Of course most of these can be programmed to do most any function, but it will be great to not have to relearn them.

The new camera should be delivered soon and after I have some time playing around with it, I’ll write a follow up post with my impressions.

Posted by Barron • Digital • Computers • Comments • Permalink

Last December, one of the hard disks on my computer went kaput. It was a 1 TB drive that I used exclusively for data. Thankfully, I’ve been in the habit of backing up the entirety of that drive to an external 1TB hard disk, which I keep locked up at my office and bring home for the monthly backup. After restoring my data from the backup, I found that the only thing I had lost was a few .mp3s which I retrieved from my laptop. I’m such a believer in backing up data, even if you are using a brand new computer! External hard drives are cheap these days, so there’s no reason not to. Plus there is some decent free backup software that is out there.

Backing up to the external drive can be as simple as dragging and dropping, then choosing “replace” when it comes across an existing file. This is the easiest backup to do. However, there are some disadvantages. First, since you are copying everything each time you backup, it can take a long time (depending on how much data you have). Also, if you delete data from your source location, it won’t automatically be deleted from the destination. This may or may not be what you want. If you want to keep them in sync, then you’d have to completely delete your backup data and do a full copy. There’s that small window between deleting the backup and making the copy when you will only have a single instance of the data.

Fortunately there are several free pieces of software out there that can help. I’m using Windows, so I have no experience with Mac backup software, but I also don’t have any experience with the built-in Windows backup software, but I generally want something that creates a backup folder that I can treat like a regular data drive. In other words, I don’t want the backed-up data to be encrypted or compressed or in some wacky format that I cannot do anything with unless I use the backup software. GFI Backup is pretty good in that you can specify what folders you want backed up and where you want them backed up to. It also has scheduling and options to overwrite files only if different, keep two files, delete files in the destination directory if it no longer exists in the source, etc. I used it when my hard drive failed and it restored all my files with ease. It also keeps track of what files change in the source and destination so that the backups are quick (doesn’t have to copy everything).

A few months ago, the GFI software was updated, and it started asking for Windows permissions. Even though I put in my password, this never worked and I soon gave up on GFI. I did a little research and found another program called SyncBack and it does much the same thing. It’s even simpler than GFI, and I love it. The explanations of what files will be copied and what will happen when it encounters a conflict are written in easily understood language. It seems pretty quick and is also lightweight.

I’ve also tried the online backup service Mozy, and while the idea was great, the execution was lacking. First of all, I have about 1TB of data to back up so the initial upload took a few weeks. Also, the Mozy system tray program was slowing down my system. It also cost about $6 per month. The price of my 2 TB drive was $69, so as long as it lasts more than a year, it will be cheaper than Mozy. Of course Mozy will keep the backup up-to-date whereas my system is once-per-month, but that’s a tradeoff I can live with.